They had tried in vain to train Poncho to eat them: the dog was stupid, but not that stupid. His children didn't want to hurt his feelings, so they pretended to eat them, but anytime he wasn't looking, they spit them out into the garbage pail. John Cold was not exactly a good cook the only thing he knew how to do was pancakes, and they always turned out like rubber-tire tortillas. Alex got out of bed without disturbing Poncho and got dressed, shivering the heat came on at six, but it hadn't yet warmed his room, the one at the end of the hall.Īt breakfast Alex was not in the mood to applaud his father’s efforts at making pancakes. In the four years of his life, Poncho had been attacked by raccoons, the neighbor’s cat, and now a deer-not counting the times he had been sprayed by the skunks and they'd had to bathe him in tomato juice to get rid of the smell. Alex was convinced that he had the dumbest dog in history, the only eighty-pound Labrador ever bitten by a deer. But it had been raining and raining for more than a week-a real deluge-and on top of that, Poncho had been bitten by a deer and didn't want to move. On those days, the only relief was to escape, to run along the beach with Poncho until he was out of breath. There had been a lot of days like that since his mother got sick sometimes the air in the house felt heavy, like being at the bottom of the sea. He decided that this was going to be a terrible day, one of those days when it’s best to stay in bed because everything is going to turn out bad. He was still tangled in the images of his bad dream.Īlexander looked at the clock: six-thirty, time to get up. He lay listening to the storm and thinking about the black bird and about his mother, waiting for the pounding in his chest to die down.

He pictured the roaring Pacific Ocean a few blocks from his house, spilling in furious waves against the cliffs.

He turned on the light with the sensation of being adrift in a boat, and pushed closer to the bulk of the large dog sleeping beside him. What had awakened him was the noise from the storm: wind lashing the trees, rain on the rooftop, and thunder. In the dream, he watched helplessly as the gigantic vulture clasped Lisa Cold’s clothing in its yellow claws, flew out the same broken window, and disappeared into a sky heavy with dark clouds. He had been dreaming that an enormous black bird had crashed against the window with a clatter of shattered glass, flown into the house, and carried off his mother.

Int'l Women's Conference - México, 2013Īlexander Cold awakened at dawn, startled by a nightmare.

Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Ceremony, 2017.

City of the beasts by isabel allende